What makes a traditional tobacco blend traditional?

(Firecured) Awhile back, I bought a tin of McClelland Navy Cavendish Tobacco, it sounded like something I would really enjoy. With this tobacco, we reintroduce the smoker to the traditional Navy Cavendish, pressed in cake and aged naturally with Dark Jamaican Rum to achieve its rich depth of flavor, color and aroma, says the description. I say, if this is what the navy was smoking 200 years ago, I can see why they had to resort to press gangs. I smoked a bowl of this right after opening and didn't like it, so I aged it for a month and still didn't like it, 6 months later and it remains awful. I just can't think of one good thing to say about this blend, which is unusual for a tobacco from one of my favorite companies.

It got me to wondering though, just how does a blender decide what a tobacco blend tasted like a century or two ago? Tobacco fans enjoy blends that harken back to the ages, but just what was being smoked back then? I'm not sure. I do know there are old recipes still around, companies like Samuel Gawith have been making some of the same tobacco blends for over two centuries. But are todays ingredients similar enough to make an exact replica?

I remember reading about absinthe maker Ted Breaux (he also makes Perique Liqueur de Tabac, a liqueur from Perique tobacco), and how he not only studied every ancient text he could find on the infamous drink, he also put vintage samples of the stuff through rigorous laboratory testing. From Wired:

"It's like forensics," Breaux says, gesturing toward the machines. "Give me one microliter of absinthe and I know exactly what it's going to taste like. "Breaux explains how the testing works. He takes a bottle of the liqueur, inserts a syringe through the cork (absinthe oxidizes like wine once the bottle is open), and extracts a few milliliters. He transfers the sample into a vial, which is lifted by a robotic arm into the gas chromatography tower. There it is separated into its components. Then the mass spectrometer identifies them and measures their relative quantities.

Could the same thing be done with vintage tobacco? I doubt it, strong alcohol such as absinthe, tightly sealed, keeps for a very long time, the same cannot be said for a tin of tobacco. We may be able to test an aged tin, but as we already know, aging changes tobacco blends, often for the better. Still, it could be an interesting exercise, perhaps a good chemist could take the results and make an educated guess as to the tobacco's original components. Mass spec anyone?

Photo: 1780 caricature of a press gang (Wikipedia).